


Dark Inside my Head

by AimeeChevailier



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 20:42:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20516135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AimeeChevailier/pseuds/AimeeChevailier
Summary: Faith POV, Faith is struggling with depression in prison. All the pain she has buried has finally surfaced. During a counseling session, she starts reflecting her feelings for Buffy.





	Dark Inside my Head

Time drips by. Days seem a blur to me, not because they pass by so quickly but because there is nothing to distinguish one from the next. Sunlight nauseates me. My skins crawl's at the sickening thought that I am still alive and trapped in this body. I sleep always but I’m never rested and my dreams feel like waking nightmares, distorted and torrid. 

I want to feel brave, to feel better, to feel clean. The trouble is I’m just so tired, I can hardly face the days ahead, not because they hold anything terrible but because I just don’t think I have the will to continue.

I have too much time to think, I don’t want to have to think. I just want to fall. Fall away and let it all just disappear. I soothe myself by imagining someone slitting my throat. I think of the blood spurting everywhere and the sensation of insects crawling out of my pores abates just a little. 

Sometimes I’m utterly paralyzed with horror. When the pain reaches such a fever pitch it becomes unbearable, even breathing hurts. I tried to strangle myself once. I took a sheet, twisting it around my throat until my head pounded with blood, and things got blurry. Someone found me.

It’s not even Guilt anymore. It is an entirely different creature. It feels like panic. Like the darkness within me has finally stopped lashing outwards and turned on me instead. It’s going to eat me alive.

After my suicide attempt, as they called it, I called it something different, they sent to an inmate counselor. I sit in the cold hard uncomfortable chair across from the desk of a small woman, probably mid-forties. 

She is so small. I could break her in two if I wanted. I could stop her breathing. I could stop her from breathing forever. It is the breath that I remember. It just runs out. Immediately I feel sick in my mouth. I swallow it.

She’s watching me pensively now. The small woman, massaging the palm of her hand. It irritates me. I want her to stop. Thankfully she does.

“It’s Faith, isn’t it?” She asks. Her voice is measured, calm, collected. I hate my name. Faith, who the fuck names their kid Faith? My mum was such a fucking bitch. My voice feels weak in my throat. Weirdly I actually want to answer and be polite but I cannot predict the intelligibility of any noises I might make so I just nod curtly. 

“How are you feeling today Faith?” she asked, going back to massaging her hand. I’m angry now. I can feel it tensing every muscle in my body. Bitch, she knows why I’m here, I tried to off myself, how the Fuck does she think I’m feeling. I want to break something. 

I don’t answer. Instead, I just bite my tongue until it bleeds. Think of Angel, just think of Angel. But he hasn’t visited in so long. I feel like some pathetic kid. The days keeping dripping by and it just gets so hard to keep fighting, I’m just so tired, I’m just so tired, I can’t keep fighting I just want it to end.

I must have said that last part aloud, because the woman has stopped massaging her stupid hand, and fixed me with an intense stare.

“What do you want to end?” she offers.

“My life, Clearly,” I laugh. It sounds ugly, it cracks the dryness of my mouth and comes out more of a choke. I think I’m gonna be sick again. The woman pauses, and considers, “I don’t know that that is true,” she continues. Her flat denial gets a rise out of me, “What the Fuck do you mean,” I bark at her incredulously. She doesn’t even blink. “Have you attempted suicide before?” she asked. 

I’m so utterly confused by this bizarre line of questioning that I actually grasp for an answer. I actually haven’t. When I was a kid, I often wanted things to stop, like my mum, when she was drunk. God, she would get mean. But I never wanted to end my life. I guess I hadn’t realized it was an option. “Not really,” I answer flatly. 

“So just now? Why?” She asks. God, I hate this bitch. “i'm IN PRISON. It FUCKING SUCKS,” I say obnoxiously loud, or at least I hope she thinks it is. It feels oddly better, letting even the smallest amount of this rage out. The silence settles around us and I use it to take some breaths, weird how anger feels like oxygen. She considers this for a moment, tilting her head to one side, like some sort of bird. “I don’t think so,” she says thoughtfully, “many people come in here, there is not a huge percentage that attempts suicide. What do you miss?” 

Anger is rising again like a torrent, cracking like a whip against my skin, threatening to shatter the glass. I could slam her face into the desk and crack her skull, it would take no more than a second. I take in another deep breath, letting it out very slowly. I just let the silence sit and don’t answer, waiting her out.

Finally, she tries again, slightly different tack. “Did you have many friends on the outside?”, “Nope.” She tries again, “No one looking out for you?” 

I think of Angel, how he helped me. I want to die a little less. Feel the faintest taste of hope on my lips. But she’s still going on her little rant cuz I haven’t said anything, “No one you want to see when you get out? No one you want to fix things with.” Fix things with. My throat catches. It’s as though she’s just changed the cassette tape in my head and now all I see is Buffy. 

Just Buffy, it’s like I’m watching a movie. It has a soundtrack and everything. Her smile always made me weak. Eyes flashing, breathing heavily as we stake side by side, a weird, wild look twisting her smile, making me want to kiss her so desperately it hurts. Her beautiful house, her lovely mum, her annoyingly adorable, sweetly obnoxious friends, everything she has. Deludedly, I think there’s a chance, a chance she’ll want to kiss me back, a chance she loves me, a chance I’ll be safe in her arms, safe with someone who finally cares, someone who gets me. I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her so close I can feel her breath on my skin, dreaming, luxuriating in this stolen intimacy. I feel like a fool, but she’s a drug I can’t ever quit.

Then it happened. I crossed it, that line you’re not supposed to. Now her face is a mask of horror, pleading with me, begging me to go to Giles, to confess to what I did. What I did? It could have been her. Fuck. It could have been her. She looks at me like I’m an animal like she’s afraid of me…. Like she pities me….Like I’m something broken! 

Like the kids at school used to look at me. 

Faith the psycho with anger management issues, Faith the slut who can’t keep it in her pants, Faith the savage Bitch who should be put down. Now I’m screaming inside with this bottomless rage. Why won’t you accept me? Why doesn’t she love me? 

Everything imploded. Somehow it all became about her. Everything that had ever happened. It all just became about her. 

She was pissed when she thought Angel was cheating on her. It gave me this twisted satisfaction, a weird delight, to think of her agony. Even then, having Angel was about hurting her. Making her feel my pain. I saw her face resolve; a steadfast, determined and blinding hatred. She was repulsed by me. 

She stabbed me. I can feel the knife in my stomach now, it burns me, Buffy. It burns like acid, I want to say, Buffy you hurt me. Why do you keep hurting me? This is your fault! BUFFY I LOVE YOU!

The calculating face of my shrink greets me as I surface from the pool of my melanoid despair and self-pity. Because this is the reality. I did this. I did. I made a choice. I did this. I did.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, very low, almost leaning forward. I let out a shaky breath to try and ease the familiar pain in my chest, the desperate gnawing hungry pain. I press my eyelids tightly closed trying to fight down the urge to sob. I succeed, I feel a familiar wave of indifference sweep over me. “Nothing,” I respond flatly, “Nothing at all.”


End file.
